Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

sovietcar

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet Car

Soviet cars

Colin Delfosse

Taken during my trips to Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) this series started as a hobby. Gone in the area for a photo-reportage on Soviet legacy, this car collection was a way to keep myself busy while waiting for permissions and complications with local authorities been solved. With hindsight, it appeared that it was part of the work. Volga, Moskvitch and Jigouli (former name of Lada) are part of the Soviet legacy as much as the bureaucracy, the nuclear tests or the space search. In the wild steppe’s region (where the cities and villages are often hundreds kilometers afar) it has been a tool of modernization in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Usually sold at affordable prices, they are now replaced by European and Japanese cars that the majority of people cannot afford. Twenty years after the forced independences due to the collapse of the USSR, Central Asian republics are affected with the same problems: authoritarianism, corruption and unequal distribution of wealth. The Jigouli driven next to the gleaming four wheels drive vehicles of political elites and other oligarchs remind it every day.